Much Larger Than an LC-A, Here's Another Soviet Era Camera!

Utah based photographer Michael Fatali has acquired original photographic equipment used during the Cold War in the CIA's U-2 Spy planes. Drawn to nature for it's power and spirit, Michael salvaged the enormous photographic enlarger to photograph what he loves best. The resulting images are astounding.

With a camera that weighs 30,000 pounds, Michael Fatali had to endure the tedious process of putting all the parts he acquired together before even being able to test if the dusty machine he salvaged from a warehouse, after having been in storage for several decades, was functioning.

Well, it was well worth laboring over as what resulted are these breathtaking images!

The above photos are produced in a 4 × 10 foot format. It’s nuts to think about being able to produce an ‘original’ in this large format and not through an enlargement. The immaculate quality of the photographs make you want not to believe the technology that took these photos isn’t digital or that the originals weren’t edited and color enhanced.

Specifically, the image definition obtainable using the U-2 enlarger is “one billion of the sharpest single analog dots”. In terms of the digital, this would translate to a massive 11 Gigapixels image file!

The meticulous Michael hand makes each photograph in his Park City dark room using old optical processes. It’s through this outdated form of printmaking that the saturation of color seen in his photos are achieved which, you may or may not have assumed, the newer digital technologies cannot match.

The photographic paper used by Fatali is the rare “Cibachrome” which is a long lasting silver-emulsion paper.

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